Crowdsourcing the June 2013 LSAT: June 2013 LSAT Explanation Central | About this project
It's not a problem if you have to look back at the passages to answer this question. What did the first paragraph of Passage B say about innovation in software? Yeah, basically "patents inhibit innovation." To answer the question, we need to find something that attacks that assertion.

A. Um, 20 years might be plenty of time to inhibit innovation. I don't think this is it.

B. This would only strengthen the idea that patents hurt innovation. We needed to weaken that idea. No way.

C. This is an inherently poor answer for this type of question, because "some" is very wishy-washy. All "some" means is "one or more." Wouldn't we prefer something like "most" or "all" if we were going to attack the idea that patents don't inhibit software innovation? Furthermore, the fact that software companies are "self-interested" doesn't mean that they are wrong.

D. OK, I can make a case for this answer. If software patents didn't exist, and if that made software innovation less profitable, isn't it conceivable that less companies would want to develop software? I think so, so I think this is a good answer.

E. No. Corporations vs. individual innovators is irrelevant.

Our answer is D, because it's the best counterpoint to the "patents inhibit software innovation" position.

Please ask questions and/or suggest corrections to anything that seems confusing... we want to make this the best resource we can for LSAT students. We'll have all the June 2013 explanations up as quickly as possible. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends!

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